On “Winning the Future”

March 20, 2011

A writer at National Review Online has more on America’s looming debt crisis, and a warning that Washington politicians may have to choose between balanced budgets in the near term and the structural reforms needed to make America solvent in the long term. Normally, I wouldn’t bet on politicians’ choosing the common good in the future over what makes them look good in the present, but America isn’t dead yet; so here’s hoping.

My short answer is No: There are already huge deficits in the short term, for other reasons. According to Holtz-Eakin, long-term solutions might “yield little in the near term” in savings. I think it’s implicit in his analysis that Congress and the American people only have so much attention and will to spend on balancing the budget, and it’s important that the focus be on the long term, not the short term, to the extent that one has to come at the expense of the other.